Office Hours: Preserving Homeownership in Altadena

Wildfire relief

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

The LA wildfires sparked an outpouring of generosity—relief centers were overwhelmed with donations and volunteers. But as the focus shifts from emergency response to long-term recovery, major gaps remain. While leaders debate future rebuilding strategies, urgent interim needs go unmet. Rebuilding may take 3–5 years, yet many families will exhaust emergency savings and loss-of-use coverage within months. Office Of: Office launched the Eaton Fire Community Rebuilding Response to provide both immediate relief and a foundation for long-term recovery. We address root causes of vulnerability, advocate for systems-level change, and develop community care strategies tailored to each rebuilding phase—ensuring fire-impacted residents can rebuild with dignity, safety, and belonging in the neighborhoods they call home.

This grant will expand our Eaton Fire Community Rebuilding Response under a larger Office Hours: Preserving Homeownership in Altadena program that couples direct services with advocacy for long-term housing stabilization solutions to address the gaps we are seeing in rebuilding and recovery. Office Hours: Preserving Homeownership in Altadena will bolster pro-bono wrap-around architectural services led by Office Of: Office that help fire-impacted Altadena homeowners access the pre-development plans needed to unlock insurance funds and begin rebuilding. In tandem, Southeast Asian Community Alliance (SEACA) will support residents in exploring long-term strategies to maintain ownership and stability, ensuring this recovery effort leads to lasting security and equity. Unique to our program, we offer a replicable model of homeowner-led design as a tool for equity, stability, and recovery. Together, our organizations aim to create a holistic rebuilding model that bridges the technical, financial, and policy barriers preventing fire-impacted families from returning home.

The Eaton Fire destroyed a historically Black community and showed how decades of work to close the racial wealth gap could be undone overnight. Our work is to ensure that recovery doesn’t exacerbate the gap by prioritizing the most vulnerable fire victims - low-income residents and underinsured homeowners.
Year 1:
Expand our reach of site-specific designs for single-family homes, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), lot splits, and multi-unit configurations.
Co-create these homeowner-led models mindful of funding, policy, and planning constraints.
Gather our partners to develop a “land banking lite” strategy that provides mid-term financing solutions to support long-term acquisition and redevelopment work.
Long-term:
Dovetail with existing state-wide policy campaigns for state funding to close financing gaps in rebuilding and support other long-term recovery needs.
Create an acquisition strategy to keep properties out of predatory hands through the establishment of a land bank.